Chapter XIV: The Old People

When Mrs. Beresford died, as has been described, there was a great flutter of talk and private discussion among all who knew her about the particulars of her death. It was ‘so sudden at the last,’ after giving every indication of turning out a lingering and slow malady, that public curiosity was very greatly excited on the subject. True, the talk was suppressed peremptorily by Mr. Maxwell whenever he came across it, charitably by other less authoritative judges; but it lingered, as was natural, and perhaps the bereaved husband did not have all that fulness of sympathy which generally attends so great a loss. There were many people, indeed, to whom it appeared that such a loss was worse even than a more simple and less mysterious one, and that the survivor was entitled to more instead of less pity; but mysterious circumstances always damp the public sympathy more or less, and people do not like to compromise themselves by kindness which might seem complicity or guilty knowledge if, in the course of time, anything not known at the moment should be found out. Thus James Beresford, though much pitied, did not meet with that warmth of personal sympathy which circumstances like his so often call forth. He was not himself sensible of it indeed, being too miserable to take any notice of what was going on around him; but most of his friends were fully sensible of this fact, and aware that but few overtures of active kindness were made to the melancholy man, whose very abandonment of his home and life made another item in the mysterious indictment against him, of which everybody felt the burden yet nobody knew the rights. It was in these painful circumstances that Mrs. Meredith first formed the link which now associated her with her next door neighbour. The first time he had come home after his wife’s death, which was only for a week or two, the kind woman had met him, indeed had laid her simple, tender-hearted plan to meet him--going listlessly into his forsaken house. She had gone up to him, holding out her hand, her features all moved and quivering with feeling. ‘Won’t you come in and sit with me in the evening?’ she said. ‘It is the time one feels one’s loneliness most--and my boys are away, Mr. Beresford.’ Her soft eyes, as she raised them to him, were full of tears; her look so pitiful, so full of fellow-feeling, that his heart was as much touched for her as hers seemed to be for him. Of all ways of consolation, is there any so effective as that of leading those whom you grieve for to grieve also a little for you, as a fellow-sufferer? His heart was touched. He could not persuade himself to go the very first evening, but he came soon, and when he had come once returned again and again. It was the first new habit he formed after that mournful breaking-up of all his habits. He could not bear much at a time of the dismal place which he still called home; but now and then he was forced to be there, and when he came this new sweet habit gave him a little strength to meet the chaos into which his life otherwise was thrown. Did not Dante, too, get a little comfort from the sweet looks of that sympathising woman who used to glance at him from her window after the lady of his heart was carried by the angels to heaven? There was no wrong to his Annie in that refuge which kindness made for him from the miseries of the world. Eventually it became a matter of course that he should seek that shelter. He went out of his own house and knocked at her door mechanically, and would sit by her, content only to be there, often saying little, getting himself softly healed and soothed, and made capable of taking up again the burden of his life. She was not the same kind of woman as his wife--her habits of mind were different. The variety, the fluctuating charm, the constant movement and change that were in Mrs. Beresford did not exist in this other. She would sit and work by the lamplight, looking up sweetly to answer, but happy to be silent if her companion liked it. She made herself always the second and not the first, responding, not leading; her gift was to divine what was in others, to follow where they went. It was this that made her so popular with all her friends. When they came to her for advice she would give it without that doubt and fear of responsibility which restrains so many people. For why? she had a rule which was infallible, and which made her safe from responsibility, although she was not herself aware how closely she acted upon it. Her infallible guide was a faculty of seeing what people themselves wished, how their own judgments were tending, and what individually they wanted to do. This she followed sometimes consciously, but often quite unconsciously, as habit led her, and she was never afraid of saying Do this, or Do that. It was one of her great attractions. She might be wise or she might be less than wise, in her decisions, her friends said, but she never shilly-shallied, never was afraid of saying to you with sweet frankness and boldness what she thought it would be good to do.

The consequence of this simple rule was that good advice from Mrs. Meredith’s lips was ever so much more popular than good advice had ever been known to be before. It is not a commodity which is generally admired, however admirable it may be; but those whom she advised were not only edified but flattered and brightened. It made themselves feel more wise. It was sweet at once to the giver and to the receiver, and kindled an increased warmth of sympathy between them. Now and then, to be sure, the course of action she recommended might not be a successful one, but is not that the case with all human counsel? This, which was the secret of her power with all her other friends, subjugated James Beresford too. As there is nothing so dear to a man as his own way, so there is no individual so dear as that friend who will recommend and glorify his own way to him, and help him to enjoyment of it. This she did with a gentle patience and constancy which was wonderful. It was natural to her, like all great gifts, and the great charm of it all was that few people suspected the reflection from their own feelings and sentiments which coloured Mrs. Meredith’s mind, nor was she at all invariably aware of it herself. Sometimes she believed implicitly in her own advice as the natural growth of her own thoughts and experiences, and believed herself to have an independent judgment. And it is to be supposed that she had opinions and ideas--certainly she had ways of her own, the brightest, and kindest, and most caressing that could be conceived.

This was the secret of those absences which had left Cara so lonely. They had become now the confirmed and constant habit of her father’s life. And it would be vain to say that this had been done without remark. While he was at home for a week or two only in a year no one said anything about his frequent visits to the kind neighbour who was not even a widow; but lately he had stayed longer when he came back to the Square, sometimes remaining a month instead of a week, and now it was understood that he had returned ‘for good.’ Both Mrs. Meredith and Mr. Beresford had, it may be supposed, friends who took the responsibility of their conduct, and thought it necessary to supervise them in their innocent but unusual intimacy, and these excellent persons were in the attitude of suspended judgment waiting to see what difference Cara’s presence would make, and that of Oswald, in the one house and the other. But it had not as yet made any very apparent difference. At nine o’clock, or thereabouts, the door would shut in the one house, and Cook and John would exchange glances; while in the other the bell would tinkle, and the two maids, who divided John’s duties between them, would say, ‘There is Mr. Beresford, as usual!’ and shrug their shoulders. He came in, and they did not take the trouble now even to announce the habitual visitor, who had his special chair and his special corner, as if he belonged to the house. Sometimes the two friends would talk long and much, sometimes they scarcely talked at all. They knew each other like brother and sister, and yet there was between them a delicate separation such as does not exist between relations. In the warm room, softly lighted and friendly, the man who had been wounded found a refuge which was more like the old blessedness of home than anything else could be, and yet was not that blessedness. It did not occur to him that because his daughter had come back to him he was to be banished from this other shelter. Cara’s coming, indeed, had scarcely been her father’s doing. Many discussions on the point had taken place among all his friends, and Mrs. Meredith had been spurred up by everybody to represent his duty to him. She had done it with a faint sense in her mind that it would affect herself in some undesirable way, and with a certainty that she was departing altogether from her usual rule of argument with the personal wishes of her clients. Mr. Beresford had no personal wish on the subject. He preferred rather that Cara should stay where she was happy. ‘If she comes here what can I do for her?’ he said. ‘My society is not what a girl will like. I cannot take her to the dances and gaieties which will please her.’

‘Why not?’ Mrs. Meredith had said.

‘Why not!’ He was petrified by her want of perception. ‘What could I do in such places? And she is happy where she is. She has women about her who know how to manage her. Her coming would derange my life altogether. You, who feel everybody’s difficulties, you must feel this. What am I to do with a girl of seventeen? It would be wretched for her, and it could not be any addition to my happiness.’

‘Don’t you think too much of that,’ said Mrs. Meredith, faltering; for indeed this was not at all her way. And it was hard for her to go against those feelings on the part of her companion which, on ordinary occasions, she followed implicitly. Even for herself Cara’s presence would complicate the relations generally; but when she saw her duty, she did it, though with faltering. Everybody else had spurred and goaded her up to this duty, and she would not shrink. ‘If you are going to settle, you ought to have your child with you.’

‘That you should dwell like this upon abstract oughts!’ said Mr. Beresford; ‘you, who are so full of understanding of personal difficulties. It is not like you. If I feel that Cara is better where she is--happier, more suitably cared for----’

‘Still, you know when the father is settled at home his only child should be with him,’ Mrs. Meredith reiterated. She was faithful to her _consigne_. If she did not see it, other people did for whom she was the mouthpiece. But it will be perceived that those persons were right who said she was not clever. When she was not following her favourite and congenial pursuit of divining others and reflecting them in her own person, she was reduced to this helpless play of reiteration, and stuck to her one point till everybody was tired of it. Beresford was so impatient that he got up from his chair and began to pace up and down the room.

‘There is reason in all things,’ he said. ‘My house now is emphatically a bachelor house, my servants suit me, my life is arranged as I like it, or at least as I can support it best. Cara would make a revolution in everything. What should I do with her? How should I amuse her? for, of course, she would want amusement. And she is happy, quite happy, where she is; nowhere could she be so well as she is now. My aunt and my sister are wrapt up in her. Yes, yes, of course I am fond of my poor little girl; but what could I do with her? You are always so reasonable--but not here.’

‘She should be with her father,’ said Mrs. Meredith, sticking to her _consigne_; and of course he thought it was perversity and opposition, and never divined what it cost her to maintain, against all her habits of mind, the opposite side. When, however, it appeared by the Sunninghill letters that the ladies there took the same view, Mr. Beresford had no more to say. He yielded, but not with a good grace. ‘You shall have your will,’ he said; ‘but Cara will not be happy.’ He did not take Oswald Meredith into consideration, or any such strange influence; and as for changing his own habits, how was that to be thought of? Life was hard enough anyhow, with all the alleviations which fate permitted. Did anyone suppose that a girl of seventeen, whom he scarcely knew, could be made into a companion for him by the mere fact that she was his daughter? No; his mornings, which were occupied with what he called hard work; his afternoons, which he spent among his serious friends in his clubs and learned societies; and that evening hour, most refreshing to his soul of any, in which the truest sympathy, the tenderest kindness proved a cordial which kept him alive--which of these, was it to be supposed, he would give up for the society of little Cara? He was very glad to give her all that was wanted for her comfort--a good careful attendant, plenty of dresses and pocket-money, and so forth; but he could not devote himself, surely (who could expect it?), to the society of a child. That anyone should expect this gave him even a little repulsion from, a half-prejudice against her. When she appeared, with that serious, half-disapproving look of hers, and when he realised her, seated upstairs in that drawing-room which he had never entered since her mother’s death, among all her mother’s relics, recalling to him at once a poignant sense of his loss, and a sharp thrill of conscious pain, in having so far surmounted that loss and put it behind him, the impulse of separation came still more strongly upon him. He shut himself up in his study more determinedly in the morning, and in the evening had more need than ever of the consoling visits which wound him up and kept his moral being in harmony. He had to ask Mrs. Meredith her advice and her opinion, and to ask even her guidance in respect to Cara. Who could tell him so well what to do with a girl as the kindest and best of women? Oswald, who had been at home for some time, did not like these visits so well as his mother did. No one ever suggested to the young man that he was _de trop_; but to be sure there were pauses in their conversation when this third person was present, and allusions would be made which he did not understand. So that latterly he had been out or in the library downstairs when Mr. Beresford came; very often out, which Mrs. Meredith did not like, but did not know how to prevent, for to be sure she felt the embarrassment also of her son’s slight disapproval, and of the restraint his presence produced. Why should he cause a restraint? her boy! but she felt that he did so, and it made her unhappy. It was pleasanter in the former evenings, when Mr. Beresford came home only now and then, and there was neither a Cara nor an Oswald to perplex the simple state of affairs.

‘How is she to amuse herself!’ Mr. Beresford said to her. ‘Yes, yes, I know you will do what you can--when was there ever a time when you did not do what you could and more?--but I cannot take her about, I cannot have anyone in the house to keep her company, and how is she to live there, a young girl, alone?’

‘I think Cara will do very well,’ said Mrs. Meredith. ‘She can always come to me. I have told her so; and the people we know are all beginning to call. She will soon have plenty of friends. People will invite her, and you must go with her here and there.’

‘_I_ go with her? You know how I hate going out!’

‘Once at least--say only once. You must do that, and then you will find Cara will have her own friends; she will not be a difficulty any longer. I am glad you trust in me to do what I can for her--and Oswald.’

‘Of course I trust in you,’ he said; ‘but it will break up everything. I know it will--after coming to a kind of calm, after feeling that I can settle down again, and that life is not utterly distasteful to me--you will not wonder that I should be frightened for everything. And you, who have done so much for me.’

‘I have not done anything,’ said Mrs. Meredith, looking up smiling from her book.

‘You say so; but it is you who have done everything; and if I am to be plucked from my refuge now, and pitched forth upon the world---- I believe I am a coward. I shrink from mere outside intercourse, from being knocked up against one and another, and shut out from what I prize most.’

‘How can that be?’ she said; ‘you get fretful, you men, when everything does not go as you wish. Have a little patience. When Oswald came home, it seemed at first, as if he, dear boy, was going to upset all my habits; but it was a vain fear. The first little strangeness is over, and he has settled down, and we are happy--happier than ever. It will be the same with Cara and you.’

Beresford gave a half-groan of dissent. I fear Mrs. Meredith saw that it had a double meaning, and that it expressed a certain impatience of her son as well as of his daughter; but this was one of the things which she would not see.

‘Yes,’ she said, with a little nod of her head, ‘I will answer for it, it will be just the same with Cara and you.’

Mr. Beresford gave a little snort at this of absolute dissatisfaction. ‘I don’t like changes of any kind,’ he said; ‘when we have got to be tolerably well in this dismal world, why not be content with it, and stop there! _Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien._ How true that is! and yet what can be better than well? I dislike changes, and this almost more than any other. I foresee it will bring me a thousand troubles--not to you, I hope,’ he said, his voice slightly faltering; ‘it would be unbearable indeed if it brought any trouble to you.’

‘Cara cannot bring any trouble to me,’ she said brightly; ‘of that I am sure enough: you are making a ghost of the dearest child. By-and-by you will see how sweet she is and how good.’

‘All girls have a way of being sweet and good,’ he said cynically, which was a mood quite uncongenial to him and out of his way.

‘That is not like you,’ said Mrs. Meredith.

He knew it was not. The thought had passed through his own mind that the saying was ungenerous and unworthy of him, and unworthy of utterance in her presence. What could any man be worth who could utter one of those foolish stock taunts against women in any stage of life, before a woman who was to him the queen of friends, the essence of everything consolatory and sweet. ‘You are always right,’ he replied hastily, ‘and I am wrong, as a matter of course. I am out of sorts. I had but just caught hold of life again and found it practicable, and here seems something that may unsettle all; but I am wrong, it is almost certain, and you must be right.’

‘That is a delightful sentiment--for me; but I am sure of my ground about Cara. Oh, quite sure!’ she said, ‘as sure--as I am of my own boys.’

Beresford did not say anything, but he breathed a short impatient sigh. Her boys were all very well at a distance. When they had been absent he had been fond of them, and had shared in the sentiment expressed by all Mrs. Meredith’s friends, of regret for their absence; but when a small share even of a woman’s company has become one of your daily comforts it is difficult not to find her grown-up son in your way. He reflected upon this as he shook hands with her, and went back to his dwelling-place next door with a consciousness of impatience which was quite unjustifiable. To be sure her grown-up son had a right to her which nothing could gainsay, and was, in a sort of a way, master of the house under her, and might even have a kind of right to show certain mild objections and dislikes to special visitors. Mr. Beresford could not deny these privileges of a son; but they galled him, and there was in his mind an unexpressed irritation against those troublesome members of the new generation who would thrust themselves in the way of their elders, and tread upon their heels perpetually. Children were much pleasanter than these grown-up young people. He did not see the use of them. Cara, for instance, though it was supposed she was to keep house for her father, of what use was she in the house? Cook (naturally) knew a hundred times more than she did, and kept everything going as on wheels. As for Oswald Meredith, who had been a sprightly and delightful boy, what was he now?--an idle young man about town, quite beyond his mother’s management; doing nothing, probably good for nothing, idling away the best years of his life. Why did not she send him to India, as he was doing so little here? What an ease to everybody concerned that would be! He thought of it in the most philosophical way, as good for everybody, best for the young man--a relief to his mother’s anxieties, a thing which his best friends must desire. What a pity that it could not be done at once! But it would scarcely be good policy on his part to suggest it to Oswald’s mother. She might think he had other motives; and what motive could he have except to promote the welfare of the son of such a kind friend?